Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Today, retailers won't carry a game that receives an ESRB rating of "Adults Only" so video games very rarely receive this rating. Developers will alter the game to get back down to a "Mature" rating and ensure customers can actually buy it.

In the 70's, 80's, and early 90's there was no ESRB, but adult video games were still not very common. Many retailers wouldn't sell them and console manufacterers wouldn't grant licenses to adult games either. A few adult video games were made for consoles though and quite a few of them have become rare and very valuable as collectibles.

Below is a list of the rarest and most valuable adult video games:

Rare Adult Video Games

Complete Price: $1,200 | See Current Prices
Peek-A-Boo Poker is a five card draw poker game with different erotic reward scenes for every $1,000 in winnings. Each scene is a picture of a partially clothed woman with a phrase riddled with sexual inuendo like "I know you have a Straight for me".

Peek-A-Boo Poker was published in the United States by a company called Panesian, who also released three other games on this list. The game was only sold via mail order to video rental stores. It was never sold to the general public and only avaialble via rental until rental chains started selling off old games they could no longer rent.

Complete Price: $1,200 | See Current Prices
Hot Slots is a slot machine simulator with partially nude images as rewards for different monetary milestones. The more money you earn the less clothing is shown in the reward images. Each image also has a thought bubble, which usually contains a double entendre like "Get ready to score my jackpot."

Hot Slots was also developed by Panesian and like their other two games is available in very limited quantities. Complete version of the game include a one page instruction leaflet that explains how to play the game. That one piece of paper can increase the price of the game by $200-300.

Complete Price: $1,000 | See Current Prices
Bubble Bath Babes is similar to Tetris and Puzzle Bobble. You rotate rising bubbles of different colors so more than four bubbles of the same color are touching and they disappear. Like the other two Panesian games, the nudity occurs after receiving a certain score.

All three Panesian games were unlicensed. Nintendo wouldn't approve publishers making adult video games, but Panesian was able to release them without the license. Being unlicensed limited the distribution channels and production capabilities for the game, which helped make it very rare.

Complete Price: $400 | See Current Prices
In X-man you must manuver a man through a maze avoiding crabs, scissors, and teeth until he reaches a pink door in the middle. After reaching the door you are rewarded with a simulated sex scene.

X-man was the only game published by Universal Gamex. It sold very poorly because it wasn't covered by the gaming press or sold in many retail stores. It is considered one of the rarest Atari 2600 games of all time.

Complete Price: $199 | See Current Prices
Bachelor Party is similar to games like Arkanoid but instead of a ball bouncing around the screen it is a man and the blocks are replaced by women in a "sexy" pose. The graphics are so poor that it is hard to even tell the "sexy" pose is even a woman.

The game was developed by Mystique, which sold its games as "Swedish Erotica" even though they were made in the USA. The company went out of business in 1983, along with most other video game developers of the time.

Complete Price: $110 | See Current Prices
Jungle Fever/Knight on the Town is a double sided Atari 2600 game from Playaround. Both sides of the cartridge can play a different adult video game - Jungle Fever on one side and Knight on the Town on the other.

In Jungle Fever you play a nude woman hovering over a burning forest who must lactate out the fire. In Knight on the Town, you must build a bridge to a waiting princess while avoiding gremlins.

Complete Price: $100 | See Current Prices
Another double sided cartridge from Playaround featuring Philly Flasher and Cathouse Blues. In Philly the Flasher you play as two men who try to catch a woman's breast milk as it falls down the screen.

In Cathouse Blues you try to score with seven different woman but must remember which house they live in without going into the houses with alarms. Along with all other Playaround games, this one sold very badly when initially released and is renowned for its horrible game-play.

Complete Price: $66 | See Current Prices
Custer's Revenge was developed by Mystique. General Custer must dodge aerial attacks to make it across the screen and have sex with a naked woman tied to a pole.

Custer's Revenge was the very first video game controversy. The game looks like it depicts Custer raping Native American woman. It was renounced by many women's groups and Native American groups soon after its release. In spite of the controversy and publicity the game sold poorly.

Complete Price: $55 | See Current Prices
After Mystique closed down, they sold their game rights to a company called Playaround, who used the game concepts to make some of their double sided Atari 2600 games. This double cartridge includes Beat Em and Eat Em (originally released by Mystique) and Lady in Wading, which is the same concept as Knight on the Town but with a female lead.

In Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em you play a naked woman who must catch semen before it hits the ground. It is infamously known as one of the worst games ever created.

Complete Price: $50 | See Current Prices
The last of the Playaround double sided games to appear on the list. Bachelorette Party and Burning Desire mimic concepts seen early in this list but with the roles reversed.

Bachelorette Party is similar to Bachelor Party but with a woman bouncing around and hitting naked men. Burning Desire is like Jungle Fever but you are a man who must use his semen to put out the fire instead of using breast milk.

Complete Price: $31 | See Current Prices
Riana Rouge is a full motion video adventure game with full nude death scenes and horrible acting. A woman is pushed out the window after accusing her boss of raping a fellow employee. During the fall she is transported to another world where she becomes a seductive warrior.

Riana Rouge is one of the few video games actually released with the "Adults Only" rating. Because of the AO rating, the game was never widely distributed and sells very rarely in the secondary market.

Complete Price: $25 | See Current Prices
The Guy Game is a trivia game with live action footage of women in bikinis after every question. The footage was shot during spring break at South Padre Island. When the game starts the breasts are blurred but as you answer more questions correctly they became uncensored.

The Guy Game was pulled from retailers shelves after a female contestant on the game revealed she was only 17 at the time. Lawsuits insued and a judge granted a restraining order which prevented the publisher from selling or distributing the game anymore.

The list is ranked by the highest average price for the game in complete condition (includes the original game, case, and manual) and then highest average used price in the event of a tie. Customize and download your own video game price guide.

Monday, April 23, 2012

In lieu of Nintendo’s recent foray into cards with AR cards for Kid Icarus: Uprising, I must remind everyone of another card-based enterprise started by Nintendo. Do you remember the Nintendo e-Reader? I do.

History of e-Reader Cards

This card-scanning add-on was released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance in December 2001. The original version did not support the link cable and could not be connected to the Gamecube. Later on, the e-Reader+ was released in Japan, this version did include the link cable support. In September 2002, the e-Reader was released in North America, this time with the link cable support. It was not successful at all. As a result, Nintendo canceled most of their projects with the add-on and pulled all support for it.

The whole project was horribly misconceived. Some cards came in sets and if one of those cards were missing, you could no longer use the data stored on them. The cards were also easy to lose or damage unless they were kept stored in a binder. They also received tremendous wear and tear as they had to be manually scanned, which could damage them.

People didn’t want to buy DLC in the form of a card. It is a pity because Nintendo put a lot of time and money into hyping and advertising this and as a result we, as the collectors, have a few really neat and interesting pieces of history to keep an eye out for.

Collecting e-Reader Cards

It is important to say that there is no stable market for these cards. You can just as easily buy a card for $5 dollars today and be able to sell it tomorrow for $50. Without this stable market, it is impossible to create a comprehensive price guide of them.

It is also not a well known fact but these cards can be printed using your own printer at home. This completely undermines the entire market but it is also important to note that not all of these cards have been scanned and finding the scans is a real pain.

You should never buy any e-Reader cards for any region other than the same region as the e-Reader you intend to scan them with. These cards are region locked.

Most Expensive e-Reader Cards

5. Kirby Slide Card

Included in the December 2003 issues of Tips & Tricks and Nintendo Power and also given away at Toys ‘R’ Us stores, this card contains a slide puzzle featuring Kirby. It is interesting to note that it also contains images of Sonic, Raphael from TMNT, and characters from Shaman King. It only contained one puzzle and when you beat it, it asked if you wanted to play again. Never pay more than $5 for this card, you can probably buy a copy of the entire magazine for that much.

4. Mario Party-e

Released on February 18, 2003. This 64 card set included a playmat and much needed instruction manual. It received very poor reviews and could even be played without the titular e-Reader. What makes it rare is that it is hard to get a full set of 64 cards along with box, playmat, and instructions. The rarest card wasn’t even included in it put instead came packaged with GamePro Magazine issue 177. It was a “Special Bonus Card” and by that, it was simply meant to replace one of the Coin cards in the deck.
The price for a complete set without the “Special Bonus Card” can be found for under $10 and with the “Special Bonus Card” the price doubles to $20.

3. Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bro. 3-e

The Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bro. 3-e card set included two sets of 18 cards each, two pack-in cards, and five Walmart exclusive cards making a complete set of 43 cards. Finding all of them is nearly impossible but they unlock some really neat stuff in-game and might be worth purchasing just for what they do. You can find several incomplete sets on eBay ranging from $20-$40 but to find them all you might have to shovel out $60. If you find all 43 for cheaper, they are a good buy.

2. Eon Ticket

This card is usable with Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire and is the only way someone can obtain tournament legal “Soul Dew”, an item held by the Pokemon. This card was given away at E3 2003, in the September 2003 issue of Nintendo Power, and for a limited time at Toys "R" Us stores. What makes this card valuable is the packaging. The only version of this card that is worth more than $5 is the E3 2003 version. You can tell which one that is because it came with a red and blue paper pamphlet stamped with a golden E3. That version sells for over $100.

1. 2002 E3 e-Reader Pack

This pack was given away at the 2002 E3 and contained 4 cards. The two Pokemon cards (Hoppip and Pichu) in this pack are interesting in that they come from a the official TCG but they have the Japanese backings as opposed to the normal US backs. The other two cards are a special variant of Manhole (the gameplay is the same but the card looks different) and a Kirby Prize Card. The Kirby Prize card is worth the most because it was used in a contest then ripped up. Not many survived.

As you can imagine, this is pricey. I have seen these cards go for around $300. That is a lot for four pieces of paper but collectors are just that insane.

That concludes the TOP 5 MOST VALUABLE e-READER cards list! I want to reiterate that there is no stable market for e-reader cards and they are a niche collector's item. As far as I can tell, this is the first price guide. Since there is no stable market, you can find prices for all these items that vary wildly from my own numbers. Now is a good opportunity to buy these while they are cheap.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

After the recent user survey, we promised to add a line to our price charts showing items in new condition. Today we fulfilled that promise. Here's an example for Chrono Trigger DS:

The blue line shows used prices. The red line shows new prices. For most games, new price data goes back to about August 2010. We have older data for a few popular titles. When you first load a game page, new prices are hidden on the chart. To display them, click the New label in the upper right corner of the chart (in the legend). For many games, the new prices are so much higher than the used prices, that showing them on the same chart makes it hard to see meaningful trends in the used prices.

With this change, we also switched from Google's Flash charts to Highcharts JavaScript charting. The new charting component provides the following benefits:

almost instant chart loading

charts should work on iPad and Android tablets

makes it possible to add many cool features down the road

We don't have a tablet for testing, so please let us know in the comments if the charts don't work on your tablet (my Android tablet recently careened off the front seat cracking the glass). Because the new charting component was originally designed for showing stock price charts, it supports some great features. At some point, we might display sales volumes or candlestick charts. Those changes aren't yet on our roadmap, so let us know in the comments if that's something you'd like to see.

During testing, we've found these new charts to be a lot of fun. We hope you like them too. Enjoy!

Friday, April 13, 2012

More than six months ago we launched a PriceCharting.com forum for our users to discuss video game collecting, rare games, their latest finds, and anything else you wanted.

Unfortunately the forum never really caught on as well as the rest of the site and we have decided to close it.

I want to thank all the loyal forum users who I have gotten to know during these last six months. It has been great hearing about your great finds, discussing the next rare games, and even seeing the odd pictures of goats and SNES lamps.

At the suggestion of our forum users we have started a facebook page for PriceCharting so everyone can continue their video game and movie discussions on the facebook page instead. Give us a like today and let us know your latest video game find and feel free to post your crazy photos too.

We will be spending the time we devoted to the forum binging new features to the site and writing more articles for the blog. There are hundreds of thousands of users who read the blog articles and find game values every month so we decided this would be a better use of our resources.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

We have tabulated everyone's feedback and comments from the survey asking what new features you want added to PriceCharting.com. Based upon your feedback here are the new features we will be adding to the site and the order we will add them:

Show New Condition prices to the Charts

Track "Complete" as a Separate Condition - Used, Complete, New

Show a Rarity Score for Each Item

Adding New condition prices to the chart will be a relatively quick change because we already collect the data. But we will need to change our charting software to make it happen. This will also allow charts to show up for mobile users and will give us more flexibility for future chart features.

The "Complete Condition" and "Rarity Score" features are much more involved and time consuming. They will require changes to our database architecture, changes to the programs that gather prices, and changes to a good portion of our website too. Unfortunately, because they are so much more involved we can't give a timeline for when to expect them to be finished.

While we work on these larger features we will also roll out some smaller features to make the wait easier. These include:

Tracking prices for niche consoles like Amiga and Atari 400

Adding additional capabilities to the completed auctions tab including showing a longer history of sales and showing the title of the listing even after it has been removed from eBay.

A few features we asked about were almost universally disliked so we will not be pursuing those. Most people didn't like the idea of receiving email updates when prices reach a certain level or having us predict where prices are going in the next couple months.

Thank you for all your feedback and continuing to use PriceCharting.com

We already provide buy/sell prices for retailers in our downloadable price guide, but retailers told us it would be helpful to see those prices while browsing the site too. All premium retail subscribers can now see our recommended buy price, sell game only price, and sell complete game price while they browse. No need to download the price guide if you don't want to.

The used prices and new prices are the exact same as before but closer together on the page. Any user who is not logged in will see a message saying they cannot view the additional prices, or if you are logged into your consumer account you will only see the used and new prices with no promotional message. See the screen shots below:

Retailer's Logged Into Their Account

Collector's Logged Into Their Account

Users Without An Account

All users can now see the sales volume for new condition items as well.